On 17 December Peter Beinart hosted an online discussion entitled, ‘Professors Alan Johnson and Leila Farsakh on whether Israel is a Settler-Colonial State.’ He was joined by special guests Leila Farsakh, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Professor Alan Johnson, editor of Fathom. Prof. Farsakh is the author of the new book, Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization Beyond Partition, and explained why the settler-colonial framework makes sense. Professor Johnson recently published an open letter in Fathom ‘”Can’t you see he’s fooled you all”:An Open Letter to Peter Gabriel et al explaining why Israel is not a ‘Settler Colonial’ society’. These online discussions are for paid subscribers to The Beinart Notebook. To become a paid subscriber, please visit: https://peterbeinart.substack.com/
January / 2022
Is Israel a ‘Settler-Colonial’ State? A debate between Alan Johnson and Leila Farsakh
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Leila Farsekh has got Herzl and many other peoples wrong as regards religious and national groups. Peoples considered themselves as a combination of both eg the four nations of Britain each have their own variety of Christianity as well as their own geographical location and national identity. It was the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in particular that separated religion and nation state and relegated religion from being an element of civil state citizenship and identity to a private choice. Herzl merely said that model was not working for non-Christians ie Jews and since Moslem immigration Moslem extremists have agreed in reinserting religion into the legitimacy of government.
Finally the Arabs created the Arab World by settler colonialism and differential rights followed by the Turks and Moguls. The Arab refusal to make a peace on half a dozen occasions which has caused their problems and they have to admit their errors instead of blaming Israel ALL the time.